Meeting with Kseniya Luchenko. The ROC from Gorbachev to Putin 25 June 2025

We invite you to the presentation of Ksenia Luchenko's book "With Good Intentions", which will take place on June 25 at the WABE Theater in Berlin. The meeting will be moderated by journalist Maxim Kurnikov.

In the early 1990s, priests of the Russian Orthodox Church urged Soviet and Russian soldiers not to commit fratricide, even if ordered to do so. Today they promise eternal life to those who go out to kill. How did this become possible? Why did the Church trade freedom for privilege? And why was the political authorities so interested in it?

Kseniya Luchenko has been writing about the Russian Orthodox Church as a journalist for a quarter of a century: she has witnessed key events in church history in the post-Soviet decades. Her book is built on hundreds of documentary sources and dozens of exclusive interviews. Luchenko explains how and why the ROC and its hierarchs came to the place where the road paved with good intentions usually leads.